In this week’s episode of Industry’s Believe It Or Not!, we’ve got hot new rumours (again) of the next-gen Xbox (again).
This time the claim is that the console’s system on a chip (SOC), codenamed “Oban”, has been in production since December 2011, mass production is to begin at the end of 2012, that it’s shipping out in October or November 2013, and that it’s made entirely out of styrofoam with beer bottlecaps and dry macaroni pieces glued to the sides. Okay, I made up the last bit.
According to a report over on Fudzilla, the 32nm Oban SOC is being produced for Microsoft by IBM and Global Foundries, and the console’s CPU will be a Power PC with an ATI Southern Island or modified 7000 series GPU.
According to another report over on IGN, the GPU won’t be from the 7000 series, but the 6000 series, somewhat “akin” to the Radeon HD 6670 that launched last year. The 6670 features 1080p HD output, with support for DirectX 11, 3D, and multiple displays.
Stay tuned – next week, we’ll have exclusive images of the new Xbox from the manufacturing plant on the dwarf planet Eris, where they were recently photographed by Voyager 2.
Xbox 720 prototype undergoing testing
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Any console will always be out of date or at least within a few months from launch, that’s the way it is. Consoles can’t be upgraded because the specs are set and games are developed to work on that specific configuration.
If however a company actually went and built a console with dual 7970 or 590’s with 16Gb DDR3 RAM, 8 Core CPU and 2 TB of storage that all works with wireless electricity and sound and also has a high performance mini LED projector capable of 1920×1200 that would be another story and no PC gamer would bitch about getting one, until 6 months later when there is better stuff available.